I develop methods for digital data, focused on developing societies.
My work has been featured by NPR, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum.

Assistant Professor of Economics, Brown University

Curriculum Vitae
dan[@]bjorkegren[.]com     Office Hours    


Publications
The Adoption of Network Goods: Evidence from the Spread of Mobile Phones in Rwanda
Review of Economic Studies (2019) [ Slides | Supplemental Appendix ]
Behavior Revealed in Mobile Phone Usage Predicts Credit Repayment
with Darrell Grissen
World Bank Economic Review (2020)
Media coverage (2015): NPR Morning Edition, The World Bank (syndicated to World Economic Forum), New Scientist, Radio New Zealand
Original proposal: Big Data for Development (posted 2010)
The Potential of Digital Credit to Bank the Poor
with Darrell Grissen
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings (2018)
Working Papers
Competition in Network Industries: Evidence from the Rwandan Mobile Phone Network
Conditionally accepted, RAND Journal of Economics
Manipulation Proof Machine Learning
with Joshua Blumenstock and Samsun Knight
[ Video (30m) | Blog post on focus groups: How do you say algorithm in Kiswahili? ]
Submitted
Non-Choice Evaluations Predict Behavioral Responses to Changes in Economic Conditions
with B. Douglas Bernheim, Jeffrey Naecker, and Antonio Rangel
Rejected with an invitation to resubmit, American Economic Review
Network Adoption Subsidies: Evidence from Mobile Phones in Rwanda
with Burak Ceyhun Karaca
Revised and resubmitted
(Machine) Learning what Policymakers Value
with Samsun Knight and Joshua Blumenstock
[ Presented at NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for the Developing World (2019), Mechanism Design for Social Good (2020), NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Economic Policy (2020) ]
Nostalgic Demand
Conference Articles (Peer Reviewed)
Assessing Bias in Smartphone Mobility Estimates in Low Income Countries
with Sveta Milusheva and Leonardo Viotti
ACM Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) (2021).
Balancing Competing Objectives with Noisy Data: Score-Based Classifiers for Welfare-Aware Machine Learning
with Esther Rolf, Max Simchowitz, Sarah Dean, Lydia Liu, Moritz Hardt, and Joshua Blumenstock
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) (2020).
[ Workshop paper presented at NeurIPS Joint Workshop on AI for Social Good (2019). Best Paper Award ]
Measuring Informal Work with Digital Traces: Mobile Payphone Operators in Rwanda
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) (2020). Notes track.
In Progress
Welfare Impacts of Micro-Loans in Nigeria
with Joshua Blumenstock
Welfare-Sensitive Machine Learning
with Joshua Blumenstock
Planning (De)Centralized Transportation Networks
with Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal, and Nick Tsivanidis
The Value and Spread of Information: Evidence from a Mobile Phone Discount
White Papers
Inferring Missing Cell Tower Locations using Call Handoffs (2014)
Products
Microsoft Pictures App for Microsoft's first smartphones (2001)